Just a Dream
by drizzlydaze
Summary: A girl's wedding day is supposed to be the happiest of her life, but for Regina every flower, smile, and well-wisher is just a heart-breaking reminder that it should have been Daniel waiting at the end of that aisle.


A/N This is for the OUAT landcomm on LJ. We were supposed to write a fic based on titles and summaries from other users.

She sees him everywhere: a flash in the mirror, a passing shadow, a voice in the wind. His constant presence provides the helpful contrast between what could have been (what should have been, what was meant to be) and what happens now.

Her dreams mix into reality. Daniel is in both; so is his death. Leopold and the wedding do not leave her thoughts even in sleep. She cannot decide if she has nightmares or respites, even when Daniel always dies at the hands of—oh, her, Mother, Leopold, Snow, does it matter? He's dead.

When she wakes, gasping, there's always a moment of surging relief (just a dream, just a dream) before she sees Leopold lying beside her. There is no cure for a waking nightmare.

Maybe that's when her fascination with dreams truly begins. The idea of being encased in a prison of her own making without end, without hope, seizes her. Later, she amends the idea of self-blame with the contents of her dreams—they killed him—and darkness fills the prison.

She daydreams.

She hears the name Eva floating around the castle, and hears Leopold call that name, more than once, with affection. Eva is Queen Eva, of course, and very much dead.

"Death becomes her," Mother says one time with a twisted smile.

Regina frowns. "What does that mean?"

Mother pats her head. She tries not to recoil. "She wears it well."

Eva is beloved by all. There is no was about it. She lives in the castle just as fully as Regina does, perhaps more so. Regina doesn't mind. This is an arrangement and the hanging shadows of Eva are reassurances testament to the fact. And it seems like Eva's funeral has never ended. There are fresh, pale garlands of lilies and chrysanthemums tucked in every crook of the castle, off-white against off-black. Sympathy gifts are delivered alongside those of the wedding, parting ways only when the messengers have filed past half the length of the castle and into the sorting room.

Where is Daniel's tribute? She cannot even say his name, cannot keep that alive like the breaths that carry Eva. There are no wreaths to his name, because no one cares about a stable-boy, much less one who passed in an unremarkable accident, save the wildflowers and apples she leaves in the stables. Memory fades. She knows this. The past falls to the wayside, dust and grit and worn from disuse.

She keeps on living. It's her punishment, perhaps.

She lives under her mother's thumb. Please the masses. Earn their favour. Make the king laugh. Care for Snow. When people love you, Mother says with a laugh, they become willing to give you the power you can see to they never take back. So she does all that with a duty in mind, a filial duty she, a good daughter, has rarely shunned, now more than ever. She knows it's warped to think Daniel would have died in vain if she doesn't follow through, but she does anyway because it's easier.

That doesn't mean she doesn't try to escape. But it's always futile.

"I'm so happy," Snow says as Regina combs her hair. "Mother will always be in my heart, but I'm so happy you're here for me and Father."

Regina remembers the last time she saw Snow, and that horrifying daydream. She swallows and doesn't speak.

"You're happy, right?"

For an instant, she can't help but wonder if Snow's questions are really those of a kind girl as innocent as her name or a just a pushy brat. Then guilt and self-disgust push in. "Happy? I am marrying a kind man who wishes me to raise his sweet-speaking daughter." There. Snow chatters on; maybe she is just a girl.

She thinks of the cloth-covered looking glass standing in her room. She thinks of running from this marriage and abandoning the royal family so fresh from grief. This is an arrangement, true, but it is also a responsibility—one accepted by Mother, but perhaps one she is still duty-bound to carry out.

Regina has too little honour and esteem left to lose any more. After all those bloody dreams and vengeful wishes, after all the damning proof that she isn't who she hoped she was or thought she'd ever become, she truly has nothing to lose. Daniel is never coming back. There is no one and nothing waiting for her out there but the vast, lonely world. The vast, lonely castle, on the other hand, has good food and good horses. The lonely queenship affords convenience.

(She has heard magic always has a price. This is hers, another punishment she sees fit to inflict upon herself: waking in the morning to Leopold beside her, caring for the guillotine child that had Daniel killed, giving herself the power Mother always loved so much.)

There is only one thing she must do.

The moment she pushes Mother into the looking glass is the moment she experiences for the first time the startling sweetness that an act of hatred can bring, the same victory she tastes in only in her darkest dreams. It is the moment, far more than any of her dreams, that she realises how very much she is capable of revelling in the lowest, vilest deeds. For her freedom, she was willing to discard her own mother. For her power; it was only another kind of power, after all.

She is in her white wedding dress with no blood on her hands. She looks in the mirror and sees only herself. Then she heads downstairs to the ceremony.

A girl's wedding day is supposed to be the happiest of her life, but for Regina every flower, smile, and well-wisher is just a reminder that it should have been Daniel waiting at the end of that aisle. It is painful. She is resigned. Daniel's shadow follows her through the necessary steps.

The next day, having borne her self-punishment, she leaves. There is nothing to chase her but the memory of Daniel and the bloody dreams (they haven't stopped. She doubts they ever will.).


End file.
